


memoriam

by ZephyrEden



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, takes place between kh1 and kh2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 10:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16116587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZephyrEden/pseuds/ZephyrEden
Summary: you promised to never forget. your memory said otherwise.





	memoriam

It’s in the unsettling vastness of darkness that Sora’s hand slips away from Kairi’s fingers.

In the time it takes to blink, he’s gone. They’re worlds apart now, a distance she wasn’t even certain existed the last time she fell asleep. But now, she knows better.

She won’t forget it.

She doesn’t know how she could. Not when she’s watching the islands spring into existence around her, thousands of lights finding their place back on this side of the realm. A thousand stars in the velvet expanse of sky and, while she stands on the sand, Sora and Riku could be on any one of them, just as far from each other as they are from her.

It’s with devastating clarity that she feels the sudden grip of loneliness, ice cold as it wraps her heart and lungs in a vice until she’s certain her ribs must be creaking from the pressure of it.

She wraps her arms around herself and the one-sided hug only drives the point further. She sinks to the ground and the waves lap at her knees. She knows the water is warm, but it can’t seep past the chill that has made a home of her skin.

She sits there for an eternity in which time doesn’t move at all and she doesn’t come back to herself until Selphie is tackling her to the ground, asking if she’s been here all night while the mayor has been out looking for her.

They don’t know. They don’t remember.

She swallows the burning lump in her throat, the one that’s causing needles to prick at the back of her eyes, and apologizes with a smile. Tidus and Wakka help her to the docks and back to the main island and she’s grateful. She doesn’t think she could stand on her own right now if she wanted to.

The mayor, the only father figure she’s known in this lifetime that started when she washed up on the beach, embraces and berates her in equal measure and she takes it all without a word. Why haven’t they asked her about Sora and Riku? She doesn’t know.

She’s glad that they think she’s only been missing for a night. She’s glad she doesn’t know how long it’s actually been.

She sleeps and sleeps and when she finally has the will to get out of bed, she knows it has less to do with the loosening grip of loneliness (It hasn’t loosened at all. She thinks it’s gotten tighter.) and more to do with the knowledge that Sora and Riku wouldn’t want her to mope around like this. They’d want her to be happy, to have fun, until they can come back and things can go back to normal.

Normal.

She isn’t sure what normal is anymore.

But Selphie is there to help take her mind off it and they try on uniforms for the new school year and Kairi pointedly avoids looking towards section of the store that her two best friends should be shopping in but aren’t. Not this year, maybe not the next, maybe not ever.

Selphie’s says that Tidus and Wakka want to meet up for ice cream and Kairi forces a smile until it feels natural enough to be mistaken for real, even if she’s the only one confusing the two.

It continues on like this until suddenly, it doesn’t. Until suddenly, it’s not that the knot of loneliness has loosened, but that it’s been overshadowed by something else entirely.

A type of forgetfulness. The undeniable feeling of knowing you have lost something important and not being able to remember what it was. It’s a feeling she knows well, one she’s wrestled with enough to place it immediately. It’s the same feeling she’s overcome with when she thinks about her birthplace, when she wonders who her are parents are. The inability to recall the face of a loved one, an image that should be etched deep into her heart but has somehow managed to find a crack to leak out of until nothing remains.

It’s an ache that runs deeper than her bones, one that nestles into her lungs and her marrow until every cell in her being is a looping chorus of _“you have forgotten something that you should always remember.”_

It’s a feeling that gnaws at her relentlessly. She struggles to focus during class, her body has adapted to the exhaustion that comes with endless nights of restless sleep, and she can never shake the haunting feeling that something very important happened here whenever she goes to the small island.

She avoids the small cave by the waterfall, in particular. But even so, she can sometimes hear the wind howling from inside when she passes by on her way to the docks. She wonders why sometimes they sound like voices instead, like the howling laughter of two boys mingling together – one she remembers and one she’s never known.

Months pass. Seasons change. The ache doesn’t dull. It grows stronger.

There’s a couple in town that she used to see a lot, but she hasn’t in a long while. She doesn’t know why.

They talk in the market and the woman mentions a bedroom in the upstairs of their house, one that looks lived in despite having no one to live there. They’ve been thinking of cleaning it out but, for some reason, there’s a deep sadness that overtakes them whenever they walk into the room.

Kairi excuses herself, says she has homework to catch up on and they apologize for keeping such a hard-working student for so long. Pain pierces her cheeks from the force of her smile, rigid and uncomfortable and obviously out of place.

They ask if she’s okay and she nods before running away. She doesn’t tell them that the thought of that empty room is enough to bring her to her knees, that the idea of it has her stomach twisting into knots that she can never hope to undo.

She can’t tell them that she thinks that room belongs to the voice that sometimes haunts the small island. That it belongs to a boy she can’t remember, the best friend of her and the boy that hasn’t come home.

She knows that Riku will come home. She can only hope that he’ll bring the boy she can’t remember home, too.

But hoping isn’t enough. Not for her, not now. Not after all this time has passed. Not when she hears the echo of his voice less and less.

She stops going to the island.

It’s a small step, but it’s something she can do. She isn’t content to wait around for Riku to come back, for someone to give her the answers. So she’ll do what she can. She won’t go back until she remembers him, until she can put a face and a name and a heart to the voice. Until it’s no longer the ghost of a forgotten memory that haunts the island.

Time passes, but time has never been kind. She feels like she’s constantly standing at the edge of a cliff, like she’s on the cusp of remembering something – _anything_ – but she’s never able to tip over that edge enough to fall in. She’s growing tired of chasing things that she can never reach.

Then, she receives a push.

It comes in the form of a voice in her head. It’s the voice of a boy that she doesn’t know, but she knows it’s not the voice of the boy she can’t recall. They speak briefly and then she hears it.

“You don’t remember my name?”

She hears _him_. Warmth explodes through her chest in a way it never has before, like she’s woken up from a deep slumber on the beach with the sun shining down on her and soaking into her skin.

“Thanks a lot, Kairi! Okay, I guess I can give you a hint.”

She holds her breath.

“Starts with an S!”

It’s a start. And that’s enough for her.

It’s silly, really. The entire thing is completely and utterly childish – the idea, the letter, the _hope_. Still, she finds herself pouring some piece of her heart that she wasn’t entirely aware of onto a piece of paper and the ink sinks into it like it was always meant to be there.

So what if Selphie will tease her over the entire notion of a message in a bottle? It doesn’t stop the small smile, the first genuine smile she’s felt in a long time, from curling on her lips and staying there as she rolls the paper tightly and slides it through the neck of the bottle. The cork she finds still smells faintly of wine. If it does its job, then it still will if – _when_ – its found. Hopefully by its intended recipient.

But if she was able to wash up on this island, to find her way here – _home_ – from somewhere out in the cosmos, then maybe… Maybe this letter would be able to get to him, to _them_ even. She has a feeling, however selfish it may be, that as long as her heart is in it, it will always be able to find its way back home.

“Starts with an S. Right, Sora?”

She’s counting on her heart to guide them home.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/deepseasalt_) | [tumblr](http://deepseasalt.tumblr.com) | [carrd](http://zephyreden.carrd.co)


End file.
